Experiential marketing and the changing nature of extraordinary experiences in post-postmodern consumer culture

Abstract

Prior experiential marketing research suggests that extraordinary consumption experiences take place within antistructural frames, i.e. outside the realms of everyday life. This paper challenges that notion, through an ethnographic study of consumers attending the Primavera Sound music festival in Barcelona, Spain. We demonstrate that festival attendees perceive their experiences to be extraordinary, despite these occurring within 'everyday' structural frames. Consumers' extraordinary experiences unfold through their negotiation of a series of structural and antistructural marketplace tensions, including commercialism/authenticity, ordinary/escapist, and immersion/communing. We outline the theoretical implications of our research for the changing nature of extraordinary consumption experiences, in light of postpostmodern consumer culture. We conclude with managerial implications and provide suggested avenues for future research.

(Re)thinking place atmospheres in marketing theory

“…Our article also reveals how the development of atmospheres at football matches may require a delicate balance being struck between maintaining fan routines that generate feelings of community (Edensor, 2015), while injecting novel encounters to stimulate excitement. This reflects work identifying that consumer experiences can involve a series of spatio-temporal tensions between ordinary and escapist, immersion and communing, and antistructure and structure (Husemann et al, 2016;Skandalis et al, 2019). Many participants, for instance, mentioned a memorably atmospheric night at the Etihad when the lights were unexpectedly dimmed and a blue moon was projected onto stadium screens.…”

“…a "looking forward" based on a looking back'. While anticipations of consumer experience can sometimes be more temporally extended, as in the case of an annual music festival (Skandalis et al, 2019), that 'looking back' can also be focused on something that was only moments ago part of the present. For example, the third author observes below a febrile prematch atmosphere rapidly building and spreading around Mary D's pub before an MCFC match, as fans realise rivals Manchester United are drawing in an earlier fixture:…”

Nostalgia and pastiche in the post-postmodern zeitgeist: The ‘postcar’ from Italy

“…Beyond this pioneering big picture of the shift towards the post-postmodern, we can look now, at the close of the decade, to a series of empirical works that allow a better understanding of the post-postmodern zeitgeist and even to envision how consumer culture has changed – or could do so – as a result. Research in the fields of popular culture (Canavan and McCamley, 2020; Fjellestad and Engberg, 2013), television fictions and novels (Doyle, 2018; Frangipane, 2016), consumer experience (Cronin et al, 2014; Skandalis et al, 2016, 2019) and tourism (Thomas et al, 2018) have provided us with some clues to understand the post-postmodern condition.…”

“…Skandalis et al (2016: 1320) underline the changing nature of experiences of consumption in post-postmodern culture, emerging ‘through a consideration of consumers’ playful and creative engagement with transitional objects in the context of everyday life’. This is complemented by Skandalis et al (2019: 49) in their study of a Spanish festival experience showing that consumers ‘are not looking for an escape from everyday life through their participation, instead they embrace these tensions and accept the everyday nature of this festival experience’. The same type of reluctance to the quest of anti-structure is noted by Thomas et al (2018) in their study of Lourdes pilgrimages.…”

Drivers of experience of students and parents in basic education: a perspective based on relationship quality

“…This growing concern is due to the growing number of communication channels, contact points and consequent increasing complexity in the consumer's experience (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). The importance of consumer experience as an important theme has proved to be in keeping with the priorities of the Marketing Science Institute (Skandalis et al, 2019).…”